Here’s the big Coke Can I was talking about earlier.

This lemonade stand got a good run when the sun came out. Jac bought a cup – she thought it was refreshing but perhaps less sugary, more lemony.

Here’s the Lamb Van – we didn’t actually buy anything from the van this year. But there were plenty of punters gnawing on those ginormous lamb shanks and tucking into chips and gravy.

This Chocolate Teddy Bear Castle was part of the Whistler chocolate stall. They had a competition going in which you had to count the number of teddy bears featured in the display. There were teddy bears in, on and around the castle.

I liked the look of those little fruit thingies around the turret.

This was a most impressive prize-winning example of needlepoint.

Jac was most interested in these ciders, especially the one with “scrumpy” on the label. She loves Scrumpy Jacks cider and is a fan of scrumpiness in general (not sure what scrumpy means? Google is your friend).

Jac was keen to see the Pixie Chicks perform. They are apparently Australia’s youngest all-girl rock band. They were pretty good – the guitar solos were very impressive, and Jac rather liked the look of the electric drumkit.

In another animal pavilion, we met a big… buffalo? He had a large hump.

I listened to this man talking about this owl. “Good luck with that,” he said as a few of us whipped out our cameras. “You’ll be lucky if he stays still long enough!”

We made our way to the Woolworth’s Pavilion and managed to catch the end of a cooking demo.

For someone with a short attention span and a hearty appetite, the end of a cooking demo is the best time to make an appearance, because that’s when all the free samples are passed around. Woo-hoo! We got to try sundried tomato and basil chicken on cous cous.

No sooner had we eaten that, more samples came our way – the same chicken, but wrapped in a fresh basil leaf. The fresh basil was very nice, actually.

We’d paid $8 and got our Follow the Yellow Brick Road bag, which contained an orange, a red apple, pear, carrot, kiwifruit, banana, a fruit and nut pack, a Golden Eggs fridge magnet, a shower timer and an Olives WA recipe card. And of course, with the $8 came various *free* samples available throughout the Pavilion. Many were the same as the previous year – such as this barbecued mushroom:

We also had a strawberry:

And the ever-popular sausage on a stick:

Freshly cooked, it dripped grease and had to be eaten carefully to avoid tongue burning injuries.

The free sausages on a stick were mini sausages – full-sized snags on sticks were available for purchase in the Pavilion.

We also got to try some yummy passionfruit yoghurt, which went down very well after the salty sausage.

This choc-dusted banana was sooo sweet.

There were meat packs for sale as well – though I can’t imagine many people would want to lug home a big roast on the train.

We also got a free girl guide cookie. There were other freebies, including Goulburn Valley ice cold milk chocolate, strawberry or iced coffee flavoured milk drink and Harvey Fresh orange juice.

And back outside, a Big Orange and The Eating House.